


Ashtray

by Cheshyr



Category: Mötley Crüe, The Dirt (2019)
Genre: Drug Use, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-22 06:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20869718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheshyr/pseuds/Cheshyr
Summary: It wasn't like Nikki's self-destructive ways were a secret or anything. Hell, they all spent half their days destroying themselves just for shits and giggles.But this... this was different. This was deeper. This was a fire they didn't know how to put out.





	Ashtray

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously this is fiction- I'm not claiming I think any of this actually happened lol

The first time Nikki hurts himself in front of Tommy, Nikki laughs. Tommy doesn’t.

It’s one of the few nights they’re in the run down apartment alone. Nikki had been _wired_ during practice- all splitting grins and wide eyes and high pitched laughs and barely letting the notes of one song fade out before scrambling at his pile of crumpled notebook paper and chattering “Wait, wait, let’s try this one next! I have an idea, let’s try this, just one more, just one more-”.

When the rest of the band finally put their foot down to end practice for the night, Mick had thrown on his shades and sauntered out, mumbling about getting a drink “away from all the crazy kids”. Vince had run off as well, loudly declaring that he needed some feminine attention after putting up with “hyper bassists all day”.

As the door slammed shut behind them, Nikki seemed to deflate a little. Looking over his shoulder, Tommy could see like neon lights in his eyes that he was waiting for Tommy to leave too. 

But the truth was, Tommy didn’t want to leave. He loved Nikki’s energy, his passion, his harebrained schemes that were always made for two. Tommy felt like he had _finally_ found someone who lived at the same pace as him. And he couldn’t get enough of it.

“Looks like it’s you and me against the night then, dude!” Tommy grinned, shaking his head fondly when Nikki lit right back up, beaming and cheering like a little kid, running into the kitchen to grab a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels.

They end up staying in the apartment- drinking and joking and shooting ideas back and forth for what crazy stunts they could pull both on and off stage. Tommy is bouncing in his seat, pulling out a pack of cigarettes as he rambles about some sort of moving drum set.

“It could, like, rise up in the air! And maybe, maybe, I dunno, spin or something?” He inhales deeply, exhaling the smoke through his word, “I dunno, but there’s something there!”

Nikki laughs from his spot sprawled across the armchair next to him, “That’d be gnarly, dude!”

They keep talking, trying to figure out the logistics of Tommy’s flying drum set, but only end up coming up with more and more absurd ideas to add to it. Eventually Tommy reaches the end of his cigarette. He glances around, the room spinning just slightly as he turns his head as if to remind him how much alcohol he’s had. “Where’d that ashtray go? I thought I saw it earlier…” 

Nikki snorts, smirking, “No worries, dude, I carry one with me.”

Before Tommy can question what he’s talking about, Nikki plucks the cigarette from Tommy’s fingers, leans his head forward to let his hair fall around his face, and presses the dying embers into the back of his neck.

Tommy sucks in a breath, body going cold and eyes widening in a pain that Nikki is giggling through. It takes a beat, but suddenly Tommy is leaping from his seat on instinct, pressing himself into Nikki’s space, long limbs awkwardly surrounding him and pulling his arm back as his hands flutter uncertainly around his neck.

“What the fuck, what the FUCK dude?” Tommy’s heart is a hummingbird in his chest that only beats faster when Nikki laughs, so carefree, so casual, as he tries to lean away from Tommy’s touch.

“What? Come on man, it’s nothing, what are you freaking out for?”

If he’s honest, Tommy knows that objectively this is not the worst thing Nikki has done. Both of them are constantly getting in trouble, causing damage and raising Hell as a hobby. And sometimes they get hurt in the process, and they’ve never made a big deal out of it before. Besides, they’re both drunk. Everyone does stupid things when they’re drunk, right?

But then Tommy finally manages to push Nikki’s hair aside, and he’s brought face to face with a topographical map of burn scars, small circles overlapping and layering over each other, some long faded, some more recent, with the new burn standing out bright and fresh and sinister, and _Oh,_ Tommy realizes, _oh, this isn’t the same at all._

Because harm was always an unfortunate side effect of their mischief. Something they tried to avoid but accepted and laughed about when it came. But seeing this history of hurt on his best friend’s skin is different. This wasn’t Nikki getting hurt by chance. This was Nikki _hurting himself_ this was _intentional_ and Tommy felt like he couldn’t breath.

“Jesus Christ, dude…” Tommy’s voice is breathy, and when Nikki twists out of his grip to turn and face him he looks confused and Tommy hates it.

“What’s the big deal?”

“What’s th- dude!” The drummer waves his hands uselessly, trying to find the words to explain something he feels like shouldn’t need explaining, “The big deal is you shouldn’t do shit like that! It’s- it’s bad for you, you could- what if it like, gets infected or something, or, or… doesn’t it _hurt?_” It hurts Tommy.

Nikki shrugged, “It’s fine.”

That doesn’t answer any of Tommy’s questions, but it feels like they’re talking different languages. There is a haze of alcohol and a lifetime of differences muddling their words. Tommy suddenly feels so very, very young, and he wishes there was an adult here to help. But he swallows it back, gets up and finds the apartment’s lone box of bandaids, and Nikki lets him place one on his neck and laughs when the drummer rambles about picking up burn cream the next day, but he agrees to use it so Tommy counts it as a win.

And he knows Nikki is just humoring him. Knows that no bandaid can fix this, not when it’s placed over years of scar tissue. But he feels a little better when he settles back onto the couch, like he’s got it under control, and everything will be fine, and he can handle this.

But then Nikki leans back, stretching over the arm of the chair and tips his head back, looking at Tommy upside down, eyes shining and smiling with a grin that was all teeth.

“I just had the best idea for a stage stunt,” he says breathlessly, “Someone should light me on _fire_.”

And Tommy realizes that he can’t handle this at all.

~

_(Later, much later, he’ll wonder if maybe Nikki switched to heroin because cocaine didn’t hurt enough. If maybe half the high was breaking the skin.)_

~

The first time Nikki hurts himself in front of Vince, Nikki is shaking. Vince is too.

Motley Crue is starting to take off, they can all feel it. The crowds have been getting bigger at each show, louder, wilder, and a few nights earlier there had even been a _line_ to get in to see them. Them! It’s amazing. It's astounding. It’s exhilarating. 

And for Nikki, it’s _terrifying._

Vince watches him from their shitty kitchen table, absent-mindedly flipping through a magazine even as his gaze stays fixed on the bassist. Nikki is coiled up on the floor in front of the couch, cigarette hanging from his lips and empty beer bottles scattered around him, scribbling wildly in one of his notebooks and muttering under his breath. Tommy had gone to visit his family, and Mick had finally saved enough dough from their gigs to make a doctor’s appointment for a checkup. Vince was still nursing a hangover, and since Nikki seemed to be in a fairly quiet mood, he figured he could handle staying home with him.

He didn’t expect to be so distracted by Nikki working, but here he was. He thinks part of it is that he hasn’t seen Nikki this stressed before. He always seemed so passionate and inspired, words and chords just spilling out of him. But now, he is radiating frustration. Every few minutes he curses and furiously scribbles out whatever he had just written, sometimes tearing the page out completely, throwing it violently to the side before starting over on a new page. 

Vince is debating whether throwing his magazine at Nikki’s head would distract him in a good way or an explosively bad way when Nikki lets out a wordless shout of irritation. His hands clench around the pad of paper, as if bracing to tear the whole thing to shreds, but instead he snaps and hurls the notebook against the wall in angry desperation. His whole body is shaking with too much of something and then, before Vince can think of what to say, Nikki curls forward, pressing his forehead into his knees, and presses the end of his lit cigarette roughly into his neck. 

“Shit!” Vince doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until he’s halfway across the room. He sees Nikki’s hand twisting the cigarette, pressing harder to burn deeper, and Vince doesn’t even think as he unceremoniously grabbed the bassist’s wrist to pull his hand away.

“Don’t _fucking_ touch me!” Vince gets the briefest glimpse of years worth of scars before Nikki is leaping to his feet, hair falling like a curtain over old wounds and panicked eyes as he backs away. His body is tense, hands shaking and shoulders hunched, and from the way he blinks in something like surprise, Vince thinks he must have forgotten the singer was even here.

The blonde throws his hands up, because he suddenly feels like he’s cornered a feral cat, and he absently realizes that his own hands are trembling too. The whole situation starts to catch up in his brain and he realizes he is so far out of his depth, it's not even funny. He’s always known the bassist was a bit crazy- but then again, they all were. They all had their own flavor of chaos that they brought to their music and their lives and each other. But this is… different. This doesn’t feel like crazy, Vince realizes. It feels like a wound.

“Um,” He hesitates, because he’s never had a sincere conversation with Nikki. They were friends by now, definitely- they lived together and were in a band together, they sort of had to be friends- but it was mostly a relationship of friendly bickering and property damage. But now, standing in the living room staring at each other, they’re in uncharted territory. “Is your neck okay?” He finally asks, and it feels like a dumb question but fuck, he has no idea what he’s supposed to do here. He sings, and drinks, and fucks. He is so not qualified to deal with this. He trembles a little more. He feels like he’s just going to make this worse.

Nikki grits his teeth, “It’s fine. It’s nothing. It’s fine.” He turns to look at where his notebook lays on the ground, his eyes full of a resigned kind of fear. Like a man staring at his own noose. 

Vince feels autopilot kick in. He forces a grin and saunters hesitantly closer to the other man, “You know what you need that’ll make you feel better?”

“Tommy gave me some burn cream…” Nikki mumbles, mostly to himself, eyes not leaving the floor.

_Tommy knows??_ Vince wants to shriek, but he bites it back, chuckling, and clapping Nikki on the shoulder, internally signing in relief when he allows the contact, “Well, I guess that too. But no! What we need are some long legs and big tits and waaaaay too much skin,” he smirked deviously.

“But I-” Nikki starts to protest, eyes darting between Vince and his own lyrics, but the singer cuts him off.

“Ah ah ah!” He raises a finger to silence him, “Dude, you are mega stressed right now. You’re not gonna get anything done like this. So slap some cream on your neck, and let’s go unwind and clear that head of yours!” 

“Are strippers your solution to everything?” Nikki’s mouth twitches towards a smile, and he finally looks Vince in the eye and the blonde grins wider. Hell yeah, screw what Mick says, Vince can totally take care of serious shit when he needs to.

“Hey, if there is a problem that can’t be solved by strippers I haven’t found it yet.” ...He hopes. He really wants this to be a problem that can be solved by strippers.

And maybe it is, he thinks, after Nikki emerges from the restroom after supposedly putting something on the burn on his neck and Vince ushers him out the door. Nikki seems to relax more and more the farther they get from the apartment (from the lyrics that never felt good enough). They laugh and stumble into their favorite club together, even getting a few fans stopping them to compliment the band, and when they sit down to throw money at all the pretty girls, Vince thinks that maybe this is fine. Maybe everything is fine.

But then they head to the bar, and Nikki orders a flaming shot, staring at the fire and even the bartender winces when he presses the hot glass to his lips far too soon. 

And Vince realizes that this isn’t fine at all.

~

_(“He was so surprised when I tried to stop him,” Tommy admits to him later, when Vince finally manages to corner him without the bassist, “I don’t think he expected me to care.” _

_“How long has he been doing this?”_

_“I don’t know. I’m kind of scared to ask.”)_

~

The first time Nikki hurts himself in front of Mick, Nikki doesn’t care. Mick does.

They’re in the studio early, going back and forth on what sort of riffs to include in a new song Nikki wants to start running through soon. Mick likes the direction they’re going, a small smile on his face as he strums away. The novelty of being a part of a band that was actually good still hadn't worn off. Mick didn't think he'd ever get tired of it. Nikki is pacing slowly in front of him, waving a cigarette like a conductor’s baton as they play through the chorus.

“Hell, yeah, that's fucking rad,” Nikki grins, dropping down onto an open chair and taking a long drag as he made a few notes in his notebook. “What were you thinking for the bridge?”

Mick hums in consideration, “Maybe something like…” He starts playing, and Nikki leans forward to listen attentively, head nodding to the beat even as he casually pressed the end of his cigarette into his neck.

The guitar playing stops abruptly.

Nikki frowned, “Why’d you stop?" He tilted his head curiously. The room is silent as the two musicians stare at each other, the extinguished cigarette hanging loosely from Nikki’s fingers. Mick isn’t sure what he’s waiting for- for Nikki to realize what he’d done, or cry out in delayed pain, or what, but he waits anyway.

“...Mick? You still with me?” The bassist smiles nervously, waving a hand in front of Mick’s face.

Mick lightly smacks his hand away, “I’m fine, but what the Hell was that?”

“What the Hell was what?”

"_That!_" Mick points forcefully at Nikki’s neck because how the _fuck_ were they not on the same page here? “We do have ashtrays, you know. Or you could at least use the couch or something.”

Nikki reaches up to touch his neck lightly, before smirking, “Now why would I want to damage a perfectly good couch?” The long black hair covering his neck suddenly looks sinister to Mick.

“Then use a fucking ashtray like a regular person!” He doesn’t mean to snap, but the truth is, this caught Mick off guard in a way he was absolutely not prepared for, “Don’t be so dramatic!”

At that, Nikki raises an eyebrow, “You’re the one being dramatic,” he says nonchalantly, “It’s not a big deal.”

And that, Mick realizes with a start, is exactly the problem. Nikki _wasn’t_ being dramatic. It’d make more sense if he was, if it was some moment of passion or emotion. But Nikki was being so casual. So mundane. He honestly didn’t think this was a problem. 

When Mick takes a little too long to respond, Nikki rolls his eyes, “Jeez, if it bothers you guys so much I wont do it in front of you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do it at all,” The guitarist mumbled, turning the implication that Vince and Tommy know about this over in his mind.

Laughing, Nikki shook his head fondly, “Play the bridge again. I liked what you had so far.”

And maybe that’s it, Mick thinks. Maybe now that, from what he can tell, all of them have disapproved, Nikki won’t do it again. Maybe it’ll be that simple.

But then, when their sessions ends, Nikki twirls a cigarette between his fingers and eyes his band mates before grinning and rattling off a half-hearted excuse about taking a piss. He lights up just as the door closes behind him, three sets of eyes frozen on the spot where he's been.

And Mick realizes that this wont be simple at all.

~

(_“We don’t know what to do,” Tommy looks at Mick with wide, lost eyes. Vince stands next to him, arms crossed, eyes darting around in frustration and worry._

_Mick shakes his head, “Fucking kids.” He mutters and grumbles and huffs, trying to hide the fact that he doesn’t know what to do either.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Might actually be three chapters, who knows, not me, I am just The Vessel.
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr @motherfucker-oftheyear


End file.
